Ep. 152 Midlife Caregiving's Invisible Weight & Coping Skills to Ease the Burden & Anxiety

Feeling mentally drained by caring for both your kids and aging parents?
You might be carrying an invisible load that’s fueling your anxiety—and it’s more common than you think.
In this episode, you’ll discover:

1.    3 transformative coping skills to ease the mental weight of caregiving.

2.    How to identify what’s  your responsibility and what isn’t to decrease

       overwhelm.          

3.    Why updating your expectations is essential for emotional clarity and peace

Give yourself permission to breathe again—tune in now and lighten your invisible load.

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover how to lighten the invisible weight of midlife caregiving. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. Are you caught in the middle caring for aging parents while still supporting your kids or grandkids? If so, you're not alone. You're part of the sandwich generation. And today we're talking about one of the heaviest and least discussed burdens, the invisible mental load of caregiving. This episode isn't about the tasks you check off each day. It's about the emotional strain that lingers in your thoughts. The part no one else sees, but you. By the end of this episode, you'll understand what I mean by the invisible load of caregiving. And I'll walk you through three coping skills to help you dissolve that load and give you back energy time, and that, oh, so precious midlife, commodity sleep. The invisible load isn't just about what you do. It's about what you carry in your head and heart. If caregiving were just about finding summer camps or picking up your parents' prescriptions, you'd probably feel like a champion. But caregiving is relational, not just a list of errands. And while the tasks are front and center, what hits hardest often comes out of nowhere. When your mind finally quiets. You stop at a red light, go for a walk without earbuds, climb, into bed at the end of a long day, and then the thoughts creep in. My parent doesn't seem truly happy. My teenager, seems uninterested in life. I have no energy from my partner. That's the invisible load, the emotional weight you carry about how the people you love are doing. It shows up unexpectedly and it feels so heavy that you reach for distractions just to avoid it. Music, podcasts, scrolling, food, a glass of wine, anything but that quiet sense of worry. But here's the thing, you are already carrying this load. I'm not asking you to add one more thing. I'm offering you a way to set part of it down. Let's begin with your first coping skill. Coping skill number one, make the invisible visible. Take off your invisibility cape and write down your concerns, not with the intention of fixing anything. Just to name them. Your brain is wired to focus on the negative. These invisible worries live in the shadows and shining light on them is a form of mental decluttering. Ask yourself, what am I invisibly worried about when it comes to the people I love? Let me share a story. One client had recently welcomed her mother, who's in her mid eighties and relatively healthy to live nearby between her job, kids schedules, and now her mom's needs, she came into session completely overwhelmed. I. I don't think my mom is happy, she said. She's not doing much socially. She's not exercising. I handed her a piece of paper and I asked her to complete this sentence: in order for my mom to be happy, I should, and in about 12 seconds she wrote: visit her daily, have her over to dinner twice a week. Help her sign up for a class. Get the kids to visit her on weekends. Take her to the kids' sporting events, help her find a church. I read the list back to her. She looked at me and she said, well, what's wrong with that? I said, gently, you're acting like your mom has no agency. This is her eighties not yours. Why are you feeling responsible for all of her happiness? Now let's look at another client. This time. A mom worried about her teen son in session. She said, I don't think he's depressed, but he just doesn't seem engaged in life. Same exercise. In order for my son to be more engaged, I should... she quickly wrote, help him find a job, encourage him to try an instrument, suggest he date, check his grades, and my personal favorite, see if he wants to weed the neighbor's flower beds. In both cases, these caregivers were outta their lanes, as I like to say. They were giving away time, energy, and head space to someone else's emotional and physical life, trying to control something that isn't theirs to manage. These were normal life transitions. An aging parent adjusting to a new city, a teen navigating life after sports. Yes, they felt heavy, but they weren't crises. Your job isn't to be your loved one's life coach or activities director. It's to support them. Not carry them. Which leads us to coping skill Number two, put the obvious into words and clarify your role. This skill is more for you than for them. Saying your role out loud not only helps you reclaim your lane, but stay in it and it quiets the mental chaos. Don't overthink it. Just say something like, Hey mom, this is a big transition. New city, new apartment, new friends. I'm happy to help you find a church or a class whenever you're ready. What was her mom's response? Oh, honey, I found a church. I've gone three times. It's great. The other client, who had said to her teen, who was no longer playing a sport, I see you trying to figure out what's next. If you want my help brainstorming, let me know. His response, oh, mom, at first I was disappointed I got cut from varsity, but you know, I kind of like having nothing to do. I'm gonna rest for a bit, then I'm gonna go find a job. These two caregivers had been losing sleep trapped in worse case thinking. And the people they were worried about, they were so comfy sleep in the night through, doing just fine. They just needed space to adjust. Which of course leads us to coping skill Number three, keep updating. One of the hardest parts of caregiving is accepting that your loved ones keep changing and so does your role. You might still see your parent as a vibrant 60-year-old who hiked on weekends, but now they're 85. Or you remember your kid as a social butterfly, and now during a quiet season of self-reflection, it's emotionally exhausting to keep updating your internal pictures, but it's essential to lighten your load. Sometimes you need to step in more. Other times you need to step back and knowing which one is needed depends on who they are right now, not who they used to be. My mom, for example, stopped playing bridge. I kept encouraging her. Don't forget it's bridge night. One day she said to me, mj, I don't play bridge anymore. My memory just isn't good enough. That hit me hard. I knew she had memory loss connected to aging, but I hadn't really accepted it. Then I said to her. Well, do you miss playing Bridge? She replied, not really. It's just part of getting old. It hurt me more than it hurt her. I realized I was trying to fix something that wasn't broken. It was just the reality of aging. Meanwhile, my client's son, after a month of disengagement, asked her for help finding a job. And if you've ever raised a teen, you know, requests like this come loaded with landmines. But it was a sign of him stepping forward. Updating who your loved ones are is tough because it always asks you to let go of some part of what was. In this episode, we explored how the invisible emotional weight of caregiving shows up in everyday moments. How it impacts your thoughts, drains your energy, and quietly builds anxiety by making your concerns visible, clarifying your role, and updating your expectations of the people you love. You can begin to carry less and create more calm in the midst of your caregiving journey. Caring for others is really what humans are wired to do. It isn't always easy, but with a little self-awareness, it can be very, very helpful and fulfilling. So here's your inner challenge for this week. Take 10 minutes to make your invisible caregiving load visible. Find a quiet space, grab a piece of paper or open a blank document and finish this sentence. Without editing or planning what comes next. When it comes to the people I love, I worry. Let yourself write freely for five minutes. Don't fix anything, just name it. Then take a deep breath and circle one concern you know isn't entirely yours to carry. That moment of recognition is your cue to begin letting go. Because letting go might just be the heaviest, invisible load of all. That's why I'll be back on Thursday with a special follow-up episode letting go of teens and parents. For everyone in midlife caught between generations doing your best to support your loved ones without losing yourself in the process. You're doing more than you think and your invisible load, it deserves to be seen. If you wanna give yourself a real treat and soak in some wisdom about caregiving, listen to episode 44. Mental Wellness and Family Caregiving. It is one of my favorites. Thanks for listening to creating Midlife Calm.